“ENOUGH TIME, it seems,” opens Commonwealth by Theophilus Kwek, “for a reckoning.”
This first poem is quiet. A patient observer stands apart from time, watching a frozen moment unfold with calm interest: a hawker centre at “CLOSING TIME”, a distinctly local relic of the past, witnessed at the end of the day.
Language is bent gently into its rightful place across each stanza. The sharp edges of intentionally anachronistic modern phrases smoothed by the placid flowing of one line into the next, on to the last. Birds stand sentry over abandoned food, shutters are pulled closed, and wrung sugar-cane sticks are bound with string. The poetic measure is steady, considered and peaceful.
